Fading Colors
by Haely Potter
Summary: Losing your wife hurts. Losing your soul mate hurts even worse.


A/N: So, I've been feeling a bit down lately, and for me the most natural thing is to write that bad feeling away, which leads to angst. Once I'd written this, I felt the urge to add a "Surprise! You, Grant Ward, have been granted a second chance! We'll be sending a year back in time so that you can fix everything you screwed up!" but that really would have taken away the tragedy of what happened... So you can think of this as a start of a time travel fic (which I will NOT be writing) or as a tragic story of how badly soul mate universes can screw you up if you happen to lose your soul mate...

Have a nice day, and remember to review! :)

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Soul bonds are a thing that have been tested and dissected time and again, and yet humans know so very little about them. Some couples have telepathy, some have empathy, some have their soul mate's names written on their skin, some have their first words, and yet others share their dreams. But everyone has something.

In Grant's case, its a mixture of telepathy and empathy. He can sometimes hear Jemma's most prominent thought, other times he can feel her emotions. He has always been able to feel them. She had a timer and very mild empathetic link with him, just enough to know he was there.

Meeting her was at the same time the best and worst thing that could have happened to him. He fell in love with her, no doubt about it, she was magnificent. But she was also loyal to SHIELD, while he's loyal to Garrett who's HYDRA. There was no way their story would end happily.

Still, as Grant wastes away, locked in a cell in SHIELD's new HQ, he draws comfort from the bond. He's not sure what she's doing now, if she's left SHIELD or what, but from her emotions he can conclude she's doing something dangerous, something that makes her nervous and scared and stressed, all the while showering her with feelings off accomplishment at the end of each day. He also concludes she no longer resides in the US, because her day rhythm doesn't match his.

So when one early morning he wakes to sheer terror oozing from Jemma through the bond, he knows something is wrong.

But he can't do anything about it. He can only listen to Jemma's frantic thoughts as she runs through white corridors, catching sight of a familiar skull and tentacles logo. He paces the cell like an agitated lion, hands clenched and occasionally punching the bare walls. He stops dead in his tracks when her terrified determination to survive changes to terrified resignation and he sees a flash of being cornered, hearing HYDRA's thugs running towards her. She turns to face her death, fumbling through her pockets for anything that could be used as a weapon. There's nothing there, just one pencil, and Grant grabs it. He can stick it in the artery of the first thug who reaches them, then take the gun-

And he's back in his cell, and where Jemma is supposed to be... where Jemma is supposed to be... there is just...

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

No feelings of terror, no flashes of white walls, no resigned feelings of love for him. No golden glow in the back of his dark mind, giving him hope.

Slowly he sits down on the floor. It doesn't matter, what he looks like to the people keeping an eye on him through the cameras. Not anymore. No point in planning an escape now, Jemma won't be outside the barrier keeping him in. He can see why his father would go mad after his mother's death. He isn't sure he would be functional at all in the real world. Except become the perfect killing machine. That is what he would become in the real world. In this cell, there is no point to anything. He can't extract vengeance upon HYDRA. He can's avenge Jemma. Here he can just... waste away.

Vaguely he's aware of someone talking behind the barrier. He's not sure who, he doesn't care who.

"Marine Inc, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. HYDRA cell, five scientists, fifteen guards. Tempest, Bayonne, France. HYDRA ware houses, eighty guards, three officers. Umbrella, Donostia, Spain. HYDRA servers, twenty guards," he recites in monotone. He lists every HYDRA base he knows, and their staffing. His voice goes hoarse sometime during the list but he doesn't notice. Neither does he notice the food in front of him. He ignores his body's needs. They don't matter anymore. Jemma won't be there to lecture him about taking care of himself.

Jemma died somewhere over seas. He'll never be close to her again. Never smell her hair after a day of hard work in the lab. She'll never patch up his cuts and bruises. Never make him her special sandwiches. They'll never argue about music or words for Scrabble. Never curl up with each other under a blanket to watch Doctor Who or read the newest book in A Song of Ice and Fire.

It doesn't matter that he hasn't been able to do those things with her in months, just the knowledge that there isn't even the slightest possibility any more is more crippling than the look she'd given him the one time she'd visited him in his cell.

Sometime during it all he has laid down on the floor, and he blinks lazily and the grey ceiling. Didn't it used to be light blue? Like Jemma's wedding dress? (Doesn't matter, Jemma'll never wear it again.)

He tries to reach to the back of his mind again, for that golden glow that's supposed to be there as a calming presence, only to find the gaping hole left by Jemma being killed. He still doesn't know how. (A bullet to the brain, his analytic specialist training says. Only way she could have died so quickly.) He wants to know. He wants to do the same to the bastard who did it. He wants to do it to the bastard's soul mate first, show him how it feels. Wants to make him suffer.

Except it doesn't matter, because Jemma will still be dead and nothing will bring her back, because Garrett used the last of the GH-325.

For the first time a flash of hatred swells inside Grant towards John Garrett, for being such a selfish little prick as to use all of the miracle drug on himself. He's not sure how much of it would have been needed to fix Jemma, but to know that there had once existed a thing that could have brought her back...

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His thoughts are hazy and the next time he opens his eyes, he's in the med bay, his soul bond still a gaping mess. There is an IV needle stuck in his arm and Grant wrenches it out roughly. He doesn't want to be on life support. (He can't see the red anymore. It just looks like he oozes black liquid, like he is no longer human. Not that he feels very human, not without Jemma.)

Bleeding out from a vein in your arm is a very slow process and he's fairly sure someone would come in time to condemn him to life again. There is a used hypodermic needle on a tray not far from him. It's empty and he's pretty sure it had been used on him, but anyway, he doesn't care. He's not about to inject himself with something.

He draws back the pump, filling the syringe with air, which is all he needs, really. A big air bubble in the veins, headed for the heart? Guaranteed heart attack. Fairly quick death, even if it wouldn't be painless, but he's never been afraid of pain, so why start now?

He sticks the needle to his not bleeding arm and pushes down on the plunger. The feeling is uncomfortable, but once he's done, he lays back, the pump only half way pushed in.

And then he waits.

It isn't a long wait until his chest starts to hurt and he breaks into cold sweat. The head ache is sudden and intense, and he closes his eyes, feeling his heart try to pump normally. It just doesn't know when to give up, much like him, before. Now he just wishes it would stop fighting against the inevitable. He doesn't want to walk away from this.

The machines he's hooked into beep frantically and he hears running coming towards the med bay. His arm hurts, but he moves it anyway to push the rest of the pump down, just to make sure.

The door is slammed open and Tripp rushes in just as Grant's vision fades.

It doesn't matter anymore. He is dead anyway, whether his body knows it or not. No point in anything without Jemma...


End file.
